Julie: Have you ever heard the Toby Keith song called I Wanna Talk About Me?

I was on Facebook yesterday when I saw that a good friend posted this status update -

“Here’s a question. Why are SOME people so self absorbed that they feel the world revolves around their lives and don’t consider the lives or feelings of others?”

A couple of the status responses to the Facebook post are -

“Because they are all narcissistic assholes.”

“Is it time to change your phone numbers?”

“People are LAME!!!” “Because they are idiots and only think about themselves!!!”

Well it seems we all know these kinds of people. People who never ask you how you’re doing or what you’ve been up to when you talk to them on the phone. People who drone on and on about their lives and kids but never take a breath to say, “So, enough about me, how are you?”

The ones who brag about their kids are the worst offenders in my book. Yeah my kids are great too but do you hear me talk about how great they are all day long? It’s just annoying when people do that. Plus, it makes them look like they have nothing going on in their own lives so they have to live vicariously through their children. They don’t realize that it makes them look like the biggest losers.

I have a neighbor who made this mistake. I have since had enough of her and no longer put myself through her torturously irritating conversations. I wonder if she has realized how stupid she sounded all those times she was bragging about her oh-so-normal-but-in-her-mind-amazingly-talented kids. It’s been a couple of years since I started avoiding her and in that time her oldest son went from being (by her account) the water polo stud who takes all AP classes while landing a job as a lifeguard in the summer to going to junior college, working at the supermarket, and still living at home at the age of 21. Hey, there is nothing wrong with what he’s doing now by any means except that his mom made him out to be so fantastic that she was sure he was heading straight to a four-year college via scholarship and that he’d be pledging a fraternity by his 18th birthday while hanging with his Baywatch babes.

I reunited with an old childhood friend the other day. I hadn’t seen or heard from her in about 25 years and thought how cool it was going to be to catch up. She asked me to give her a call so I did and we talked for about 30 minutes. When I hung up, I sat there and reviewed our conversation in my head for a few minutes. What I realized was that I had learned everything about her life and that she hardly asked me a thing about mine. I found that I had to struggle to fit a factoid or two about my life in between her stories of our high school years and how all the girls hated her and how all the guys loved her. She hadn’t changed a bit in those 25 years. Still a narcissist. Still single too. No kids to speak of. I think she is too self absorbed to be able to share her life with a family of her own. How sad.

One thing that these people have in common is a lack of self esteem. They have this desperate need to force everyone to hear all about how accomplished, tragic, busy, smart, physically fit, jilted, or whatever they are. They probably feel like no one really cares about them unless they dramatize their lives and they are determined to show us all how important they are so that they can squeeze out a little bit of self-worth by any means possible. It’s a desperate ploy that they don’t realize is just making themselves look, well, desperate.

Kim: Don’t forget about those who “act” like they are politely letting you get a word in edgewise when all they are actually doing is figuring out how what you are talking about is going to meld into their next topic about themselves. You cannot carry on a decent conversation without being a good listener.

Here’s a link to that Toby Keith video in case you’ve never heard of it.